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Ok for those of you who breed bettas, just how do you keep track of who's who?

I'm thinking about naming mine A, B, C, ect ect ect, and then say I spawn B with F the fry will be named BF1. This becomes a challend after 6 generations from 2 lines. The will be BFDH1. That doens't sound too hard to keep a handle on, but what about 5 yrs from now?

So how do "YOU" do it? Is there a better way?:%)

nope, that seems the most common way, letters and numbers, and logbooks.

(on a side note, i've just been given the job of figuring out how to set up a breeder registry in Australia, big job so um, i'm really interested too!)

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

hmm... well in horses we keep pedigrees written out such as on a spreadsheet. Each horse gets a name/number in the order it's recorded. The name or number tells you nothing about the parents but if you search it up there will be a map of it's ancestors.
http://www.sitstay.com/pedi/
Dam=mother
sire=father

I guess I could explain more detailed now that I've had time to think about it. Let's use gerbils since they produce multiple offspring and I've bred them for certain colors. So I start with 4 gerbils. What I name them doesn't matter but I number them 1,2,3,4 and make a file for each recording name, color, age, and any deformities or other notes. Hopefully you aren't breeding deformed animals . I breed 1x4 to produce litter 1 or L1. I record for L1 the number of offspring, colors, deformities, other notes. From L1 I decide to keep 1 animal so I number that animal 6 and create a file. The rest of L1 doesn't need to be given files because it would all look about the same and you aren't keeping them. You can also record the color genetics information if you have that knowledge. Eventually you can put it all into pedigrees. Companies make big money selling software to animal breeders that will automatically fill in all information for you when you breed 2 animals as well as alerting you to inbreeding. Spreadsheet worked for 10 breeding gerbils. It worked much better than using part of the parents name or constantly adding 2 letters plus I often named them seperate from their number. It simply identified them in the records.

I think that people keep a list of the parents and names and then the spawn numbers mean generations like F-1 is first generation F-2 second generations. Also, that really only works with spawn siblings or it will always be an F-1. I think most people only go to F-4 because after that you really should cross 2 similar strains to keep the inbreeding down sides to a minimum.

I use a logbook type thing, and each fish has a name, description and a numer. So say I spawned fish #1 with fish #2 the spawn would be called 1X2. Then if I were to spawn sibling from that spawn they would get their own number and their spawn would be called say 3X4, ect ect. If iam working with a line i usually give it a set of numbers, like for example yellows would be in the 50s, blues in the 60s. It can be hard, but ive cut back on my spawns so its pretty easy at the moment.

ashley

Thanks Ashley. That makes a lil more sence, but still I can see a lot of :%):%):%):%):%) LOL

Ah i know! I don't know how some of the big breeders do it! You know, the ones that have spawns like everyday.

ashley

My sister breeds dogs, and each litter gets names starting with the same letter. So any puppy starting with 'A' is from the first litter she bred.

You could do something similar with fish. Give each 'litter' a letter, then a number for individual fish. So the first lot would be A001-A200, the second lot would be B001-B200, etc.

Then keep a separate list of parents, eg
A - Bob Betta and Betty Betta
B - A015 and A142

You could also record any other information on that list too, like when they were born and genetic stuff. That way, you're not trying to cram a whole lot of info it's name, it's name just gives a reference to where all the info can be found.

Using a single letter would only let you name 26 batches. Using two letters (AA,AB..ZZ) gives you 676 combinations and 3 letters gives you over 17000 combinations.

Callatya, what kind of information do you have to keep in the breeders register?

i am trying to record the history of all fish and spawns, so we can keep the imported lines going. i want to be able to hook people up with a fish that suits there needs, preferably from the same line.

I am anticipating well over 1000 entries within the first year or so... i am very nervous!

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

Wow! That's going to be hard!

What if you gave each breeder a 4 or so letter code, and then they followed the system I said above.

Then you could identify each fish by a code like PUGG-AAA-001, so breeder-batch-individual fish. It would be easy to find who bred a fish, and see if two fish were born at the same time. But I guess you'd have to search a database to see if two fish were related if they weren't from the same batch.

Maybe you could find out what kind of software they use to register pedigree dogs? That could make things a lot easier.

yeah, thats certainly a thought....

to start off, we need to register the OS imports, and the pet store ones, probably just by phenotype... erg, it makes my head spin just trying to think of it, BUT it is needed, and well, it was me that bought it up, so yeah *sigh* here i go!

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett